Today in Washington DC, 16 new members will be inducted into the USA’s National Inventors Hall of Fame, including the man who created the first home video game system, Ralph Baer; as well as the ‘father’ of GPS, Roger Easton;  and the wonderfully named fellows who invented post-it notes, Art Fry and Spencer Silver.

Quite a jazzy Odyssey... but Baer knew he was on to something with the Magnavox.

The mixed bag of 2010 honourees will be presented with their awards at a ceremony in the US Government’s Commerce Department. A Washington Post report on the event tells how Ralph Baer developed early video game technology while working for a defense contractor. Before inventing what became known as the Magnavox Odyssey home video game system in 1968 (it was released to the public in 1972), co-workers often asked him how they would make any money from the project.

“People thought I was wasting my time and the company’s money for that matter,” said Baer, who is still working in the gaming industry. “There’s no way anybody could have predicted how fast this industry would take off.” He also created ‘Simon’, a single-chip memory game introduced in 1978.

Roger Easton meanwhile said his group was trying to solve a different problem when they created the technology that formed the foundation for GPS.

“It started really with a problem very different from GPS,” he said of the research on time signals. “Some weeks later the idea came that why don’t we use it for navigation?” he said in an interview.

The other 2010 inductees are:

- Yvonne Brill for the space propulsion system engines called electrothermal hydrazine thrusters.

- Art Fry and Spencer Silver for Post-it notes.

- S. Donald Stookey for glass ceramics.

- M. Judah Folkman for using angiogenesis inhibition in fighting tumors.

- Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Emile Gagnan for Aqua-Lung diving equipment.

- W. Lincoln Hawkins, Vincent Lanza and Field Winslow for polymer cable sheath.

- H. Tracy Hall, Herbert Strong, Francis Bundy and Robert Wentorf Jr. for synthetic diamonds.